How I Retold Hans Christian Andersen's "The Dryad"

The Tree Hugger, a Dystopian Fairy Tale is a retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Dryad.”. I absolutely love the idea of spirits whose lives are connected with trees. However, in the original tale, the dryad is flighty (really?) and curious. As is often the case in fairy tales, that curiosity doesn’t go unpunished.

But I ask you: What is wrong with wanting to see more of the world?

Nothing!

So, on those two counts, I altered the tale. Rather than the flighty creature in Andersen’s tale, I believe a nature-spirt born with a direct relationship to trees would be steady, solid, focused, and determined. Thus, Mags was born. More apt to be silent and solitary, sturdy and resilient than whimsical and capricious.

And what about that trip? The fact that Andersen’s dryad got punished for her curiosity and sense of adventure just didn’t sit well with me. I wanted my tree hugger to find joy at the end of her journey, to rise above her trials and tribulations. Mags is also curious when she leaves home. But her curiosity is driven from a deep wound. And though her journey isn’t characterized by whimsy, there are some wild woods and a bit of enchantment along the way.

The third novella in my Once Upon a Time Today collection, The Tree Hugger is now available.

The Tree Hugger on Pinterest

To celebrate this new release, all three novellas and the prelude to the Once Upon a Time Today collection, are $0.99.

What a perfect time to get your fairy tale fix!

How I Retold Han's Christian Andersen's "Beautiful"

Since the third tale in my Once Upon a Time Today collection, The Tree Hugger, will be releasing on August 26th, I thought I'd do a series on how I retold each tale. I'll begin with Beautiful Beautiful the first tale in the collection, which is will be free on Amazon August 20th through 23rd, so pick up a copy if you don't already have one!

I chose Han's Christian Andersen's "Beautiful" for the first retelling in my collection because beauty is something that has always moved and fascinated me, it's one of my obsessions. I do believe that whether one wishes to acknowledge it or not, beauty has a lot of power. However, the question of what is beautiful, is very personal. And though our perceptions of beauty are influenced by our families and culture, we all ultimately perceive the beautiful distinctly.

You see, I could go on and on...

In Andersen's tale, a male sculptor is besotted with a beautiful but quiet young lady. He misinterprets her reticence as depth and proceeds to marry her. As he lives with her, he discovers his wife's lack of speech isn't so much that "still waters run deep", more that she's rather passive and insipid. His awareness of her nature comes too late. It doesn't help that the young lady's overbearing mother moves in with the newlyweds.

I won't go into the rest of the tale here [SPOILER ALERT], but suffice it to say that by the end of the tale, the sculptor's eye for beauty has altered and matured.

To make this tale contemporary, I chose a female protagonist, Kerrin Mayham. She needed to be driven by beauty, so a film director seemed like the perfect profession. I wanted to remain true to the protagonist misjudging the interior of someone who was physically beautiful. Enter aspiring actor Anthony Zorr.

While he doesn't have an overbearing mother, he does have an aggressive agent in Marni Lamb. The story unfolds from there.

I added the narrative frame after the core story was written because I wanted to add another layer of enchantment to the tale. Allowing Kerrin to create a fairy tale by drawing from the experiences in her life, allowed me to recreate one of the special memories I shared with my own mother who seemed to spin the most fantastical tales out of nothing when I was child. But who knows? Perhaps she was drawing from the well of her experience too.

The Girl Who Believed in Fairy Tales

Loosely biographical, The Girl Who Believed in Fairy Tales is free! The three short stories chronicle the journey of a young girl spiritually sustained by fairy tales as she transforms into a woman who finds her place in the world by—what else?—writing fairy tales.

The Girl Who Believed in Fairy Tales on Pinterest

You're Invited: Fairy Tales Eclectic

Love all things fairy tale? So do we! Fairy Tales Eclectic is a new Goodreads group where we will be discovering, discussing and curating the best new fairy tales, fairy tale collections, fairy tale retellings, and fairy tale influences.

Best news? You're invited! So come by and say Hi! While you're there, tell us your favorite fairy tale. You can also add links to any fairy tale-themed blog post you've written, and create new topics for all your favorite favorite fairy tale reads. If you're an author, you can announce your fairy-tale-influenced new releases, sales, and freebies.

Hope to see you there! Heidi

Pre-Order The Tree Hugger for $0.99

Release Date: August 26th, 2014

Genre: Dystopian Fairy Tale
Pre-Order at Amazon | Goodreads

ABOUT The Tree Hugger:

Born and raised in the Free Territories, Magnolia Lee Winthrop, prefers the company of trees and nature to spending time with most people. Although she’s not much of a talker, she’s got plenty of strong opinions about life and how it should be lived, just like her mother and grandmother.

After the settlement’s forest farm is burnt to the ground, Magnolia’s life can never be the same. To cope with her grief, she’ll have to leave behind everything she’s ever known and loved for a hard journey through a foreign, paved, and abandoned world.

The Tree Hugger is a dystopian retelling of Han’s Christian Andersen’s “The Dryad.”

The Girl Who Believed in Fairy Tales is a prelude to the Once Upon a Time Today collection and includes the three short stories:

"The Girl Who Watched for Elves"
"The Girl Who Dreamed of Red Shoes"
"The Girl Who Couldn't Sing"

Novellas in the Once Upon a Time Today collection:

Beautiful Beautiful
Dreaming of the Sea
The Tree Hugger

Fairy Tales Plus on Pinterest

A long time ago I used to collect inspiring images and pin them onto real cork bulletin boards. That was way back in the day when I collected interesting postcards and magazines... I'd hang the boards up around my apartment to remind me of the things that were important to me. For some reason, the demands of daily life can make me forget! In the past few months, I've discovered Pinterest and it has been such a joy to create virtual bulletin boards! I'm slowly creating a board for each of my books, as well as a few for some of my passions!

Books

Half Faerie

The Girl Who Believed in Fairy Tales

Cupcakes and Kisses

Passions

Fairy Tales

Flowers

Cats

The Unsung Heroes

Half Faerie is now available!

Daughter of Light

As I've been preparing for this release, I've been remembering when the story was born, oh so many years ago. The original premise was to tell how the "real story" of several fairy tale characters' lives in the enchanted world dramatically differed from the tales and stories that swirled around them in the mortal world. However, the plotting and world building became something of a nightmare, so I decided to scale it back and focus on a single fairy tale character. The two finalists were The Myrtle Faerie and Melusine. Melusine won out. There was just something about her dysfunctional family that I loved. Also, as a middle child, when I read:

The fates of the younger daughters are not important to the story, but that of Melusine--the eldest and leader--is...

I immediately imagined Melusine getting all the press in the mortal world while her two younger sisters battled it out as the unsung heroes in the enchanted world.

Plus, what was up with Pressina and that curse?!?!? What kind of mother would do that to her child? What would drive her? Compel her? Justify her actions? Could there be any justification?

Image via pinterest fairypunk.tmblr.com

Those were the questions I set out to answer when I created Melia's world, the world of a young half-faerie, half-mortal who must step up when the world around her threatens to implode...

A Red Cape, Grandma, Wolves, and Woodcutters

I'm reading Scarlette by Davonna Juroe. A fascinating retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, it's very paced. (When I say paced, I mean the narrative doesn't move at rocket speed! However, paced doesn't mean S.L.O.W. either. For me, the narrative of a paced book is even. Although I can devour books that are action-packed (move fast), as a general rule, I don't like books that inch along. (Little, Big by John Crowley being an exception!) In-between, paced books tend to have a nice rhythm and speak to the author's confidence in their story.) Okay, got that!?!

Image via Pinterest/shimey ruiz

Scarlette is in a heap of trouble and it doesn't let up. There are so many questions about what in the heck is going on and who is—or who is not—to be trusted. Set in 18th century France, the novel's plot and world building  draws on the "infamous and horrific Beast of the Gevaudan attacks of the 1760s." Told in Scarlette's point of view, everything advances through her eyes, and we, the reader, are as uncertain about the events that unfold as she is. The strict narrative style lends itself to a sparseness of detail that I appreciate and precludes any info-dumping.

A red cape, Grandma, wolves, and woodcutters are all present. So is an interesting nod to Charles Perrault, the teller of the dark version that inspired this particular retelling according to the Author's Note at the beginning of the book. One of the main characters has a dog named Perrault. Clever. Okay, it got a smile out of me.

To be honest, the story is a little crazy! It's windy, twisty path encourages guessing. How will all this end? I haven't figured that out, but I'm totally enjoying this read!

Immortal Souls & Such...

Yesterday, I wrapped up Dreaming of the Sea, my retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid. As I'm preparing to send it out to some beta readers, I'm curious as to what they'll think about it. It was a challenging retelling for me to write. When I first read the original fairy tale, I was surprised that the central theme was the mermaid's quest for an immortal soul. Yes, there was the romance with the prince, but the purpose of that was to gain an immortal soul as in Andersen's tale, mer people have no souls.

Photo credit: Berlin based artist Svenja Schmitt creates highly impressive and vibrant colorful art work using different properties like feathers, beads, emeralds, sea stars, insects, and colored contact lenses.

As I was creating my world and the story of my retelling, I kept getting stumped. I had to go back and read the original tale several times before I could really accept that the core of the story was so deeply religious. Myself, I'm not a member of any organized religion, although I'm certain there is meaning to our lives. I'm also sure that what we don't see in this life, is infinitely more powerful than what we do see, and that there is some superior organizing intelligence in existence. I know, sounds vague, and  I've come to almost hate the term spiritual because it conjures such a vast diaspora of beliefs...

Personally, I like to keep things simple.

When I finally accepted that the winning of an immortal soul was the crux of Andersen's tale, I pondered upon how to "turn that on its head."

What about the losing of an immortal soul?????

Oh, yes, I loved that idea.

So in my retelling of The Little Mermaid, rather than having my main character be a mermaid seeking to gain an immortal soul, one of the central characters in Dreaming of the Sea, Miriam, is a human at risk of losing her immortal soul...